The solar panels will also allow the production of energy on a 24-hour basis. The Eos project is developed by Paphos company Alfa Mediterranean Enterprises Limited, on a total land area of 1.8 million square metres, in the area of Alassa, Limassol.
The project uses innovative technology and features a tower-based, concentrated solar power system, developed by Solastor in Australia. The system is constructed in modular form, which makes it easy to scale up or down as required.
Each module consists of a tower of approximately 24 metres high and a solar thermal receiver block and heat storage tank. Once the power station is constructed, the project will be able to produce power for each module as it is completed and brought on-line.
The towers to be installed are made of high quality graphite, and have a power of 50 MW. They are expected to cost around €175 million. The European Investment Bank (EIB) will fund the project with the amount of €60.2m as the project is under the European Commission’s NER300 Scheme.
A Chinese electricity company will construct part of the project supervised by Solastor. Solastor PTY Ltd is an Australian company established to undertake renewable energy projects throughout the world.
In an announcement Solastor said that this is the first solar project in the Mediterranean to operate 24 hours a day.It added that its acceptance for funding by NER300, one of the world’s largest funding programmes for innovative low-carbon energy demonstration projects and for innovative renewable energy (RES) technologies, notes the importance of saving energy through this particular technology, something which cannot happen with all renewable energy resources.
It also noted that while installation of traditional systems of renewable energy resources contribute to the combating of climate change and the improvement of environmental consequences caused by the burning of fossil fuels they can also cause significant operational problems and increase the cost of operation of the network.
This innovative system, said Solastor, with “integrated” storage possibility, due to use of graphite allows for use of the energy produced even 24 hours later.
The company added that Cyprus can even use this method to export electricity to Europe. Another benefit of this system is that it can produce about 2000MW per hectare annually, almost double the production of other similar systems. A similar unit to the one in Cyprus will be constructed in China while contracts are being signed in Abu Dhabi in order to construct similar projects in the Middle East and North Africa.
Source: InCyprus
